


Garrotter, Jury and Judge

by Amiril



Series: The Drunk Philosophy Club [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Denial of Feelings, Drinking, F/M, Feelings Realization, M/M, Post-Episode: S01E06 Rare Species, no beta we burn like Cintra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22905703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amiril/pseuds/Amiril
Summary: “Please.” Jaskier has a lot of experience in love, and even more experience in poetry, which is basically the same thing. “Nobody has a choice about who they fall in love with.”“Of course they do.”-Or: after 1x06, Jaskier and Yennefer get drunk and argue about the nature of love.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: The Drunk Philosophy Club [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1669642
Comments: 10
Kudos: 276





	Garrotter, Jury and Judge

**Author's Note:**

> I loved every scene these two shared and hope they have more in season two. 
> 
> Warning for brief reference to requested magical conversion therapy

Jaskier would like to say he’s handling it well.

So Geralt doesn’t want him around? That’s fine. He will go to a tavern, sing, get some money, get laid, and move on tomorrow to improve his already successful career. Maybe a few years from now, Geralt will stumble into a party Jaskier is playing at, and Jaskier will nod politely before turning to talk to his wealthy friends, patrons and lovers while Geralt… shits in the woods and gets run out of town because he doesn’t have Jaskier buttering people up anymore. That sounds about right.

Step one of the plan—the tavern—has been completed. Step two is on hold until he finishes his second drink and considers a third. He’s too tired from the climb down the mountain to sing well, not to mention, possibly, too drunk, so maybe he’ll have to make his coins last until tomorrow, find a more upscale place to sing, and… continue with the plan.

Yeah.

This isn’t the place for making money anyway. Just a dingy tavern with cheap booze and scruffy patrons. Jaskier is pretty sure one of the men in the corner is a Reaver from the dragon hunt: a woman is picking his pocket, but Jaskier isn’t going to say anything. There’s a small crowd of townsfolk gathered around a rather intense Gwent game, and off to the side is—

Oh, oh son of a motherfucker.

She’s got a cloak on, and hair partially covering her face: everything about her in this moment says _don’t notice me,_ but once you’ve seen Yennefer of Vengerberg, it’s hard to look away.

And Jaskier has seen her. He’s _seen_ her. Naked and deranged, clothed and quiet, partially clothed and fucking Geralt—aaaand now she’s noticed him, and they’re staring each other down.

He takes another drink and tries to look like he doesn’t care.

Because he doesn’t. 

If she hadn’t shown up—or if she hadn’t broken Geralt’s heart so spectacularly—then maybe Geralt wouldn’t have sent Jaskier away. They would be making camp together now, or getting food in this very establishment. Maybe they’d be on their way to the coast tomorrow. 

And maybe drowners fly.

Clearly, Geralt has been holding onto twenty years’ worth of resentment. Clearly, it was all going to come crashing down someday. Clearly, he should have been driven to anger years ago so that Jaskier wouldn’t have wasted half his life following a man who hates him. 

Of course, if he’d done that then Jaskier wouldn’t be able to write the song about the lonely gold dragon. He hasn’t actually written it yet, but he will. Definitely. After he finishes this drink.

_What rhymes with ‘asshole?’_

…Maybe he’ll write it tomorrow.

He certainly can’t do it now, because Yennefer is standing up. Yennefer is walking across the room. A people have finally noticed her, but she’s clearly not interested because she’s headed towards the door—no—no, she’s walking _towards Jaskier,_ and he takes a deep gulp to fortify himself because she’s dropped down in the chair across from him.

“Did he send you after me?” she asks. Her hands look small, wrapped around her chipped mug. It’d almost be easy to forget how easily she could kill him.

Or, it’d be easy if Jaskier was an idiot. Which he isn’t. No matter what Geralt thinks.

“He did not.”

It’s hard to tell if she’s pleased or disappointed by this. Understanding women is Jaskier’s area of expertise, but Yennefer isn’t exactly _women._

“What are you doing here, then?”

Drinking himself stupid. Though not so stupid as to forget to check and see if anyone is in earshot before he says, “The same thing as you are, I imagine. Getting the fuck away from Geralt of Rivia.”

Her eyes widen a little, surprised either at the news or that he shared it with her. Maybe he shouldn’t have.

“I thought you’d be happy that I left him,” Yennefer says, frowning at her drink. “You get him all to yourself again.”

“I might have been.” He’s never pretended he’s not the sort to take pleasure in the pain of a rival. “But then he sent me away. So—” Jaskier waves his hands at the tavern. At its low ceilings and chipped walls and shady company. “Behold. Me going away.” 

“He sends you away all the time, though.”

Does he? They’ve parted often enough, but that’s all Jaskier had thought it was: _gotta take care of something, nice seeing you, let’s do it again soon._ Sure, Geralt always bitched at him, but after all this time, he’d thought the complaints were more of a running joke. The way that Jaskier used to tease his siblings.

“Well.” Telling Yennefer anything is basically inviting her to use it against him later, but who _else_ is he going to talk to? If the world finds out Geralt hates him now, Jaskier’s reputation will be shot. “This time it’s for good.”

He’s not sure why he expects her to say something cruel, but he does, and she doesn’t.

“I’m hoping to escape him for good as well. If Fate will allow that to happen.” 

From what parts of the situation Jaskier had put together, it doesn’t seem likely. Destiny and djinn are two things that should not be fucked with.

“Is that really what you want?”

Yennefer snorts. At any other time, Jaskier would delight in seeing her do something so undignified. “What I do or do not want doesn’t seem to matter. And any… feelings… I may have were not my choice, so they cannot be trusted.”

“Please.” Jaskier has a lot of experience in love, and even more experience in poetry, which is basically the same thing. “Nobody has a _choice_ about who they fall in love with.”

“Of course they do.”

“If people could choose, every marriage would be happy, wouldn’t it? And life wouldn’t be nearly as exciting if that were the case.” Exciting for Jaskier, specifically. He isn’t such a fool as to think that any of the people he sleeps with _love_ him, not even the ones Jaskier lets himself fall for: but that attraction, the passion, however long it lasts—that’s not a choice. It’s that moment when he locks eyes with someone at a party, in a tavern, across a ballroom. It’s that moment when they look back, and he knows what they’re thinking. It’s its own kind of magic.

“Do you know how many people have asked me for love spells?” Yennefer asks.

Fewer than have wanted a cure for the common cold, more than wanted her to fix a bard they accidentally cursed _,_ probably. “No?”

“A lot. And much of the time, people want them for themselves. _I just need to fall in love with my wife again, so I’m not tempted to stray.”_ Her voice shifts to a whine. “Or, _please make me fall in love with my fiancé and out of love with the baker, for I can’t bear to break my mother’s heart. Please make me lust for men, because I must marry one and the thought makes me ill._ Or _Please, Yennefer, cast a spell that will make me love my son._ ”

“That’s not _choosing_ to love. That’s trying to fix their emotional and marital problems with magic.” But Jaskier can see the appeal. He’d rather let a graveir eat his bones than let Yennefer mess with his head, but if another mage offered to make Jaskier not give a shit what Geralt thought of him—

He might pay a high price indeed. 

“Sure. But the kind of love spells I make don’t _work_ for more than a couple days. After that, it’s all in their heads. A man that would choose fixing his heart over hurting his wife—that is itself an act of love. Deep down, he always loved her, or else he’d have strayed without a second thought. He just had to work on it. The countess who was in love with the baker married her fiancé instead, and she grew to care for him without my help.”

“And the other two?”

Yennefer shrugs. “I did what I could for the woman with the baby, but after a few days she hired a nanny. I don’t know if they’ll ever be close, but she didn’t hate _him,_ she hated being kept from her work. Remove her resentment, and they might be able to build a warmer relationship as he gets older. And the other girl… well, I can’t change her nature, but even married, she will still have other romantic options to pursue. If she chooses to.”

“So, what,” he says. “You’re saying love is choice and work? Hardly the stuff of songs.”

“You of all know people should know that songs are lies.”

Please. “Songs are true in _spirit,_ even when they aren’t true in technicality.” _A friend of humanity._ Ugh. His cup is empty, and Jaskier waves down the barkeep for another. Might as well get the taste of this entire week out of his mouth. If he runs out of money he’ll just sleep outside somewhere.

He’s getting too old to sleep on the ground, but he’d left his bedroll with Roach.

“There’s always a choice,” Yennefer insists. “You can choose to follow someone, can choose to stick with them even when it is difficult, even when you don’t want to. Even when you can’t stand the sight of their face, you stay, because you love them. Or, alternately, you can tell them to go keep digging for answers in the dirt while you go on your own adventures, because if you’re the type of person to do that then the two of you would have never worked out anyway.”

Jaskier feels like he’s missed something here, but who the fuck even knows, honestly. He’s not here to give Yennefer of Vengerberg relationship advice, even if she was looking for it. Which she’s not. She’s just… drinking and being wrong. 

“That’s dumb,” he says. It’s not his most eloquent argument. “I loved Katharyne of Deavon, and I left her. It wasn’t my fault they chased Geralt out of town. Kat and I were simply not meant to be.”

“Do you still love her?”

“No. But it took me _many weeks_ to recover.”

Yennefer does not look moved.

“Just because something is short doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter,” he continues. “Not all love has to be forever.” And something in her argument isn’t adding up. “Anyway, by your logic, I loved Geralt more than Katharyne.”

“Didn’t you? Why _did_ you follow him everywhere?”

Because they were friends. “For the _stories._ ”

She rolls her eyes. “Your name’s already been well made. You don’t need him. You’ve seen enough of his fights to make up stories whole cloth.”

“But that flair of authenticity, that’s what keeps my fans listening. And anyway, he needs—need _ed,_ my help, too. He got run out of town a _lot_ more without me. And traveling with him was…” well, it might not have always been fun, but it was often exciting. A new way to see the world. These last few years he’s found himself restless, staying in one place for too long. After about a month he’ll dream of being on the road, walking alongside Roach, playing tunes to the hills and carrying out a conversation with Geralt’s facial expressions. Sure, he’d thought about kissing said face one or twice or a hundred times, but he’s thought about kissing lots of people. “He’s not a bad traveling companion, once you learn to decode his grunting. And he’s funny when you least expect it, and—” he stops, because Yennefer doesn’t want to hear good things about Geralt, and it’s not Jaskier’s job to defend him anymore. Even if it’s _true,_ all of it, the humor and the kindnesses and the layers of a monster-killing man who dug up a djinn to take a nap. Geralt has carried so many things by himself for such a long time, and Jaskier—

Jaskier had always dropped everything, when Geralt came by. Plans. Lovers. Jobs.

“You made a choice,” Yennefer says, and—

And he _had,_ hadn’t he?

“So did Geralt.”

It does not matter how Jaskier feels, because Geralt had not chosen Jaskier.

She examines him. “For what it’s worth…” she trials off, and he doesn’t bother to wonder what she was going to say, because he has an uneasy feeling that it would have been a comfort and he is definitely not prepared to handle that. This is already more emotionally honest than he’d ever expected to be with Yennefer of Vengerberg in his entire life. Showing her anything more would be practically suicidal.

And yet, he finds he isn’t ready to leave.

Because he’s just gotten a new drink. Obviously. Not because he’s doesn’t want to lose this last connection to Geralt.

Geralt the asshole. Who Jaskier hates now.

“This countess and the baker,” he says, trying to adopt a lighter tone. “She wasn’t Leonie of Hagge, was she?”

“You were acquainted?”

“Only for a few hours.” He lets his smile speak for itself. “So much for choosing her husband.” Leonie had alluded to the baker story, though she seemed to hold onto it as more of a poetic regret than lingering affection. A romantic notion to entertain herself when court life was irritating: _oh, to have run away with the baker and work in an innocent little bakery selling pastries to the common folk._

“That’s just court,” Yennefer says dismissively. “You didn’t see her professing her love and leaving with _you_ , did you?”

“I never asked her to. Though if I had, I imagine she’d have chosen the comfortable life she led over weeks on the road—” he stops, realizing that, once again, he’d factored Geralt into his hypothetical plans. 

“She’d have _chosen._ ” If Yennefer had a pot and pan to bang together, she’d probably be doing it right now. “If she’d really wanted to be with you, or the baker, she would have tried to make that happen. Asked you to stay, or left with you. Just like Duke Wentor’s son chose to run off with that werewolf instead of assuming his duties.”

Jaskier almost chokes. “He _what?_ I thought he was killed in Dol Blathanna.”

“That’s what the Duke wanted everyone to think.”

His fingers are itching for his notebook, but he knows that if he asks Yennefer to tell him everything, she’ll probably refuse to do so on principle. “What kind of man falls in love with a monster?”

Instead of answering, Yennefer just takes another drink. “What indeed.”

**Author's Note:**

> Jaskier: Geralt never chose me  
> Yen: Should I tell this idiot about that time Geralt told me to save him whatever the price? Ehhhh. Nah. Misery loves company.


End file.
